Great Hunger: Irish Potato Famine

Death had descended on the Emerald Isle. People everywhere were dying. By January 18, 1847, an eyewitness reported there were unattended bodies by the roadside and in homes. Surviving family members had neither the strength nor the money to care for their deceased loved ones. Some people were dead as long as 11 days before they were buried.

So many people died the coroners were overwhelmed. Burdened beyond their capacity, they stopped holding inquests for people who died in the streets. Funerals, when they were held, had few mourners. People weren’t strong enough to attend.

There wasn’t enough wood to make coffins. Undertakers developed coffins with sliding bottoms so they could be reused after people were buried in mass graves. Later, the Sliding Cross Memorial was made from one of those temporary boxes.

Mothers who had no food to give their children gave them seaweed. (Evidence of that was found in the autopsy of a 2-year-old girl.) Ireland, the beautiful country will some of the best farm land in the world, had become a place that was littered with bodies and abandoned villages.

Many who survived the initial onslaught of famine and desperation had one thought: Leave the country. Within four years, about 1 million people did just that.